An answer in Genesis: Noah-volution!

Cancers in Genesis 08

Creationism: it is the centuries old religion versus science battle. In their assertion that the bible is the true and inerrant word of god, Young Earth Creationists, from whatever religion or religious denomination, are diametrically opposed to most scientific disciplines, most scientists and most Christians who accept evolution theory as fact. They have no problem acknowledging the merits of science when using internet, television, radio, cars, airplanes or any means produced by the application of science when it helps them spread their religious dogmas; but equally condemn any scientist who dares to prove their bible false.

A major battlefield within this on-going struggle is the story of the Deluge, or Great Flood in the bible’s first book Genesis. Scientific disciplines like biology, geology, anthropology and genetics all counter the truthfulness of the bible, leading to a few of the following juxtapositions:

Young EaRth Creationism	Science
The universe was created on Sunday, October 23, 4004 BCE at 6 o'clock in the evening.	The universe is about 13.8 billion years old
Earth was created between October 23 and October 26, 4004 BCE	Earth is about 4.5 billion years old and took millions of years to solidify into our current planet.
Plants were created on October 26, 4004 BCE and the sun and moon the next day on October 27.	The sun formed before the planets in our solar system. Plants came after, and it took them a couple of years.
Two humans were created: either one male and one female together, on October 29 of 4004 BCE (Genesis 1); or one male on October 29, 4004 BCE, agriculture, animals and birds soon after and finally a female human some unspecified time after.	The first humanoid specimens go back up to 2.4 million years. Around 300,000 BCE there were at least 9 human subspecies, interbreeding to a small extent, out of which the only extant human subspecies (Homo Sapiens) emerged as the dominant one, driving the other subspecies to extinction.
All humans descend from Noah's grandsons and their mating with their aunts and/or mothers.	Humans descend from dozens ancestors of different varieties.
In support of the above: - the bible	In support of the above: - history - genetics - biology and paleobiology - geology - geobiology - paleoanthropology - paleoclimatology - paleobotany - archeology - physics - astronomy - cosmology - mathematics

This is in a nutshell the YERCs argumentation against the theory of evolution:

Evolution theory is wrong, because the bible is true
The bible is true because the bible is the word of god.
The bible is the word of god because the bible says so.
The bible says that god does not lie and that god does lie.
Therefore, god’s word is true.
The two contradictory creation stories and the flood story are in the bible, hence true.
Hence, the theory of evolution (and geological science) is false.

With this irrefutable evidence, it is noteworthy that some YERCs deem it necessary to further argument their case. This is where the citation from the Ark Encounter Theme Park (run by Answers in Genesis) website comes in. If you prefer, you can skip it but I include in its whole here to show that I am not taking any part of the argument out of context.

I owe gratitude to the Young Earth Creationist who authored this post; because he or she clearly points out that the word of god tells us that evolution is a fact. And since it is the bible telling us so, there is no more discussion possible. So let me repeat that: the bible confirms that evolution is a fact.

I will ignore the deceitful misrepresentation in the descriptions of ‘kinds’ versus ‘species, as it is irrelevant. The total number of animals on board of Noah’s ark is equally irrelevant. I will just go by the YERC’s own example of Canidae, or canines.

For an animal to be ‘clean’ it had to both ‘chew the cud’ and have a completely split hoof. This excludes canines from the clean animals. Noah would therefore only have taken one pair of this ‘kind’, or one male and one female specimen of the family of Canidae. The Great Flood of 2348 BCE wiped out all existing Canidae, all geni of Canidae and all species of Canidae, save for the two specimens on Noah’s ark. So how many species of Canidae could there have possibly been on Earth by 2347 BCE?

That's right: one [1] or at the most two [2]

As of 2020 CE there are 37 extant species of canidae. Two more species existed up until recently: the South American fox went extinct around 1600 CE and the last Falkland Islands wolf died in 1876 CE. That means that the pair of canines on board of the ark evolved from (at most) two species to 39 in 4,223 years … a rate of one new species every 114 years! [and we're not even talking about the thousands of varieties]

That’s not mere evolution: that’s Noah-volution!

Patricia Forrester, 17 March 2022

Notes, sources, references:

When taken literally or as the inerrant word of god, the story of the Deluge in Genesis is nonsensical in many more ways . It is my view that, when the god-concept is taken out of the story, it really does represent the cultural memory of historic events with a global impact. “God willing” I may come back to this at some point. When it comes to proving that evolution is a fact, I am confident that demonstravi quod erat demonstrandum.

Cited article textualized from its original form on “How many animals were on Noah’s Ark”, Ark Encounter blog, > About the ark https://arkencounter.com/animals/how-many/

For a basic outline of what constituted as clean animals during Noah’s time, see i.e. Wikipedia, “Kosher animals”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosher_animals Note however that the concept of clean and unclean animals is not explained in Genesis 7, which is one of many indications that the flood story was written, or at least incorporated in the Torah after the composition of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, as the reader and the characters (Noah and his family) are assumed to already know what rules the distinction is based on. Or the entire story may have simply been a retelling of the by that time more than thousand year older story of Atra-Hasis (the “Exceedingly Wise”).

Although I hardly needed to for this refutation of the creationists’ denial of evolution, I did some general checks using a variety of articles, among which:

An answer in Genesis: Noah-volution!

Cancers in Genesis 08

Notes, sources, references:

Recent Posts

Comments